


Sh*t Just Got Real: Scully's Abduction Arc (X-Files, Season 2)

by PlaidAdder



Series: X-Files Meta [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Acting, Alien Abduction, Ascension, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, david duchovny - Freeform, episode: s02 duane barry, gillian anderson - Freeform, one breath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I talk about how the abduction arc of Season 2 apparently triggered a quantum leap in David Duchovny's acting skills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sh*t Just Got Real: Scully's Abduction Arc (X-Files, Season 2)

I don’t know how it works in the big leagues. But in amateur theater, which is the only kind I have any experience of, there is this thing that often happens. You cast people. You watch them rehearse. You are alarmed at how flat they seem to be. You give them direction, you do little games, you try to coax them into letting it out. You wonder why none of it works. Then one day, you’re rehearsing something you’ve done 50 times already and all of a sudden DANG! Shit is happening here! These people are ON FIRE! This is going to work out after all!

And you don’t know why it happened or how, when the need arises, you would repeat the process. My crackpot theory at this moment is that it has to do with the relationships developing between the actual people in the cast, as distinct from the characters they’re playing. As you spend more time working together you get accustomed to each other’s rhythms and you get to know them better, and it enables a kind of nonverbal communication that will eventually convince people that the relationship between the imaginary people you’re playing does exist and really matters. (Also it helps once people are looking at each other and not down at the script, but that’s another story for another time.)

I posted just after starting the X-Files rewatch about how…uh…how much room to grow David Duchovny has as an actor at the beginning of Season One. Season One was, on the whole, enjoyable; overall they were mostly good episodes; my favorite, I think, is “Darkness Falls.” But all the way through you’re watching Duchovny sort of stumble toward his character, helped along by a steadier and no doubt very patient Gillian Anderson. You’re still waiting for that moment when something happens and stuff is on fire.

I would say that moment comes in Season 2, specifically in Mulder’s interrogation of Duane Barry in “Ascension.” The producers dealt with Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy by a) having the FBI split the two of them up so Scully gets less screen time and b) having Scully abducted, first by Duane Barry and then by…aliens?…in “Ascension.” She’s MIA in “3,” and then reappears in “One Breath,” most of which she spends in a coma.

Well, that picture shows you the first moment, I would say, when the directors really got something out of David Duchovny. Mulder is of course upset, distraught, etc. as soon as Scully goes missing, but is handling it mostly in classic silent brooding fashion. Then, while he’s trying to get Duane Barry to tell him WTF Scully is, he notices a piece of blue tape with a smear of blood and some light-colored hairs on it which he assumes are Scully’s, and whoa nelly, HOLD HIM BACK! It’s the first time you see a strong emotion from him that actually feels genuine, and it’s all the more startling because his affect has been so understated all along. You kind of sit up straight and think, wow, shit just got real.

And from that point on, it’s all suddenly a lot more compelling. “3” was more interesting than I thought it would be, partly because of the way it works as a parable about post-AIDS sexuality (maybe more on that later, someday), but also partly because Mulder’s interaction with the hot not-really-vampire at the center of the episode is more complex than you would expect it to be and Duchovny actually handles it well. Then in “One Breath,” Mulder has to do a lot of things he’s had to do before—confront shadowy sources in darkened parking garages, run around chasing people, worry about Scully, lock horns with Skinner—but it’s all just better. That moment in “Ascension” turned something on. 

So this is where the show gets real. One thing that struck me about this show when I went back to it was how slow the pace felt. This is in part the time-travel effect—everything is faster and more hyper now—but it also derives from a commitment to making the characters and the M/S partnership real. For instance, when you watch Scully do an autopsy, you don’t just see the part where she finds the thing. They show you how long and boring the process is, and how thorough she has to be. “One Breath” is often very slow—all those shots of Scully in her coma-reality, Scully in the hospital—but it takes the time to deal with real end-of-life issues that would come up in that situation. It takes the time to show us how Mulder interacts with Scully’s family, even her annoying New Age sister Melissa (who does get a few good moments), to contextualize Scully’s relationship to her mother so we can feel her agony as she has to make the decision, and so on. 

Another unexpected little gem in “One Breath” is Skinner’s speech to Mulder about why he’s not accepting Mulder’s resignation. And this is another thing the pacing allows. It takes Skinner a long time to tell that story. Fortunately Pileggi worked on that puppy at home in front of a mirror and you find out more about Skinner in those few minutes than you ever did before or ever will again. And Mulder sits there and listens, even though much of it seems irrelevant to his immediate situation, because he’s fascinated that something real is happening. 

Meanwhile, on the more action-y end of the plot, I cannot help noticing how hard the show works to protect its hero from moral corruption—something which, for instance, the creators of Sherlock are no longer interested in doing. This is foregrounded by Mulder’s scenes with X in “One Breath,” in which X basically tells him look, get out now before you wind up being the kind of guy who executes people in parking lots without thinking twice about it. I love X. I had a fondness for Deep Throat too, but X is a lot more compelling to watch. “You want to know what I know?” he demands, looking at Mulder after he’s just shot the blood thief. And you can see Mulder thinking, Jesus Christ no, not really. Mulder declines the opportunity to shoot Cancer Man. The writers send Melissa out to his place as if she’s his shoulder angel, trying to save him from his “very dark place;” and he follows her, knowing he’s missing his chance to start becoming X. He goes back to Scully’s bedside instead; and when she wakes up and tells him she doesn’t remember anything, he says it doesn’t matter. And it actually doesn’t, because she’s better, and he’s figured out that he cares a lot more about that than he does about vengeance.

Ah, 1990s, how I have missed you. I wish I could have you back.


End file.
